Funeral Notices

Funeral Notices were published and delivered to people in the community as handbills. Locally, this custom began in the 1800’s and continued into the early 1900’s. The information in a Funeral Notice usually included name of the deceased, family names, date of death, date and location of services, clergy in charge of services, place of interment and sometimes pall bearers, and served as an invitation to the funeral.

The Funeral Notices in this collection are beginning to deteriorate so it was decided that this small collection should be digitized and made available for public access on both the Internet and on DVDs. The library will maintain the original funeral notices in the archives.

The Funeral Notice reflects a time when death was honored and shared with friends and family members, long before modern communication arrived via daily newspapers, the telephone, and today’s Internet.